


viva ultra

by evenifittakesahundredyears



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: BUT REALLY DEPRESSING, EdelBert, F/M, Masturbation, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), a bit of healthy self loathing to start the day off right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-23 10:07:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23009806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evenifittakesahundredyears/pseuds/evenifittakesahundredyears
Summary: i saw someone lament on twitter that there was no edelbert sad jackoff fic and who am i to refuse to fill this void
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 25
Kudos: 81





	viva ultra

**Author's Note:**

> she's my lifeblood/she's my secret-sharer
> 
> are you jealous of the show we put on?/are you wary?  
> and is there justice?/ is there something which resembles pleasure?

The heavy wooden door was solid against Hubert’s back, the iron fittings cold even through thesilk-under-wool layers of his school uniform. He’d slammed it with perhaps a bit more force than necessary, given the hour and his normal tendencies towards stealth, but in his haste he hadn’t been operating as he normally would. He bit a gloved fist, slumping down to his knees on the uneven wood planks of his student room, the texture of the door dragging roughly against his coat. 

He wondered how it would start; a small part of his brain not consumed by his fervor was horrified and disgusted that he’d even pursue this line of thought. It would start, he decided, just as it had not 2 minutes ago, when he’d gone to rouse Edelgard for morning training before classes, a three days a week ritual. It would happen as it happened this morning, and not for the first time, he thought, as he palmed himself through the stiff material of the uniform trousers. He’d go to knock on her door in the pre-dawn light, hand raised to rap sharply three times on the wood, but would instead pause, hearing the muted gasps from within, the muffled sounds of repetitive activity from beneath layers of blankets. This was where fantasy Hubert and real Hubert parted company— in actuality Hubert had fled, silently, back to his room where he presently fumbled with the buttons and snaps of his pants, hands shaking. The Hubert he now imagined had knocked anyway. A sharp intake of surprised breath issued from within the room, despite that this was the appointed time for their regular practice, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Was it passion that caused her to lose sight of the time, so unlike the normally meticulous and punctual Edelgard? Was she simply scratching an itch, fulfilling a physical need, or did she think of something? Someone? Dream Hubert knocked on the door. A soft gasp, a brief scramble, blankets rustling, and then—

“… Hubert?” She sounded out of breath.

“None other, my lady. As always,” dream Hubert responded, coolly. 

“… Wednesday. Right. Well, come in,” she sighed. 

He entered her room and shut the door behind him, the soft click sending a thrill through him. Ahouse leader’s room was a bit more spacious and well-appointed, and it was, as always, tidy and scented by the vase of fresh flowers she kept by the desk. 

Another departure from any reality Hubert had known: Edelgard had invited him in clad in her sleep things— he’d seen them, of course, but never on her— the cream colored garment somewhere between the shade of her skin and the shade of her hair, was either long for a sleep shirt or short for a nightdress, and much more sheer than he would’ve guessed. Her hair was unbrushed, unbound. The bedclothes were rumpled and her face was flushed. She looked away from him, at a random corner of the floor, an irritated look on her face. She was standing in the middle of the room, one hand on the other elbow, an awkward and defensive pose. 

“My lady, you seem… not yourself, this morning,” Hubert offered tentatively, stating the obvious and coming off a bit smug despite his best efforts even in fantasy. “What troubles you?”

“Hubert,” she began, cheeks red and still not meeting his eyes, but voice steady and commanding nevertheless. “There is something I would ask of you, but,” how unlike her, to _ask_ anything of him, and he couldn’t stop himself from interrupting.

“Anything, Lady Edelgard,” he said, fervent, honest. 

“It’s…” she was uncharacteristically hesitant, which usually meant it was personal, that she wanted to _talk_. It was rare for her, and there was something of discomfort in it for him, however, the pride of being taken into her confidence outweighed it.

“Anything,” he reiterated. 

“I find myself growing… restless,” she looked anywhere but at him, violet eyes flitting around the room to land on this or that, “and I can’t seem to… satisfy myself. The way I normally can.” Hubert knew what was coming, but tried to keep his eagerness off his face as he awaited her command. She paced a bit; slim, muscled legs treading the worn red throw rug. Hubert watched. He was waiting to see if she’d say it directly; she was brave, determined, direct, but awkward when it came to personal matters, distant, repressed. It was something they shared, though he ascribed more value to it in her than in himself. He found himself looking over her, unable to politely keep his gaze on her face any longer. He admired her often, clothed, which seemed less dangerous, less inappropriate, but she really was lovely. In her sleep things and with her hair mussed she looked like some sort of fairy from a storybook he would’ve seen as a child— tiny and lithe and slim, all white from the unnatural silver of her hair, the mark of the experiments he had failed to protect her from at all of 12 years old, to the tips of her fingers and toes, diminutive but shockingly strong. Her big violet eyes were the only point of contrast. Her arms and legs were marked with silvery scars, signs of battle but also the torture she endured in childhood. She was going to make a magnificent empress. (The real Hubert slowed his pace— the idea even of looking over Edelgard’s body, inadequately clothed, to his heart’s content, and perhaps the content of other parts of him, filled him with equal parts desire and personal disgust.) He tore his gaze back to her face. It seemed she wasn’t going to say it. 

“I live to serve you however I may,” he reminded her, gently. “Every part of me is at your convenience.”

Edelgard sat down on the edge of the unmade bed with a heavy sigh.

“Then serve me, Hubert. Touch me.” She reached for him (he bit his lip and wrapped the hand that wasn’t ardently stroking himself around his own throat, hastily undoing the wretched clasps and straps of the high military collar), holding out a perfect white hand, and he went to her, helplessly, enthralled.

He took her hand in one of his, and her delicate shoulder in the other. She felt warm through his fine silk gloves and he was glad of them— no need to jar her with his cold hands. (The idea of touching her directly, skin to skin, and Hubert, normally silent as the grave even in the throes of fervent self-manipulation, choked back an odd, strangled sound and tightened his grip on his own throat, increased his pace.) He laid her back on the bed, kneeling over her, and briefly had to tamp down the impulse to kiss her. He lashed out mentally at dream Hubert for getting so carried away even inside of a fantasy, that he could want, on any level, to behave as a lover to her rather than a servant, a tool. 

He was propped over her on an elbow, but rolled over onto his side next to her. He stroked a hand down the side of her body, over her thin, clinging nightshirt. She squirmed when he passed over her ribs, her stomach, but she met his eyes and nodded. He pet her in this manner a few more times in a way he hoped was reassuring, pleasurable, and tried to will himself to pay more attention to her face and her body language than to the feel of her lithe form, pliable in his hands. 

Encouraged by the softest sigh, he stroked up the outside of one pale, scarred thigh. She shifted, spreading her legs ever so slightly for him. (Hubert bit his lip and swallowed, let his thumb ghost over the head on the upstroke. His head knocked back against the door with an audible thump but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.) He caressed the inside of her thigh, squeezing, and couldn’t fight the thrill of how much of her he could get in just one of his hands. He paused, looking at her face. 

At his hesitation she opened wide, unnatural lavender eyes, meeting his gaze. She nodded once, commanding, impatient, and let her eyes slip closed and her head fall back. Hubert pulled one of his gloves off with his teeth, cast it aside. (Hubert had read plenty of the novels and half finished manuscripts Bernadetta von Varley left lying around, the ones she certainly wasn’t getting from Seteth’s carefully curated library, and while that may not serve him as well as experience in the real world, it was more than adequate to power his fantasies.)

Hubert ghosted now bare fingers over her sex, found her already nude under her night shift. The barest whisper of a touch, the backs of his fingers, and Edelgard gasped and arched herself towards him, a bowstring pulled taught. He continued the teasing, feather-light touches to hide his shaking hands as much as anything else, but she grabbed his bicep, her grip shockingly strong as always, as though his arm were the handle of one of the poleaxes she favored in war. 

“Hubert.” It was a warning, delivered though it may have been on a gasp. Far be it from him to play coy. 

“My lady,” he acquiesced in a murmur. He touched her in earnest. She was very warm and very wet already, which Hubert chose to interpret as having something to do with him and not whatever unsatisfying solitary activities she may have been participating in before his arrival. It was easier than he expected to know what to do, how to touch her, because reserved and awkward though she may be in personal conversation, she was responsive and open in her reactions to his touch. 

“Yes—“ and “not quite there, that’s, ah, yes,” and “more” and “faster” and while she was never quite pleading with him, there was something helpless and plaintive in her commands that shocked him to hear. 

When he slid a tentative digit inside her she moaned so loudly that he clapped his still gloved hand over her mouth, smarter than to stop his work with the other, but retaining enough sense for caution, always, even now. Her eyes flew open and he expected her to glare at his insolence, as he gestured with his eyebrows and a tilt of his head meaningfully towards the wall beside them, on the other side of which was Hilda Goneril’s room, who most decidedly was not an early riser and already out for the day— maybe in the future it would make more sense to use his room, just on the other side of Edelgard’s and with Caspar directly adjacent on the other side, who was both stupid and easily manipulated, but he was getting ahead of himself here— She didn’t glare, though, she met his look and nodded weakly, panting into his glove, the silk growing damp with her heavy breath. The look in her eyes was hazy, like she was looking at him intensely but from somewhere far away. He added a second finger to the rhythmic in and out slide of the first, the pressure of his thumb on her, outside and above his fingers, just so, he forgot all about the way he was so impertinently still covering her mouth because she was still making this eye contact with him, and then—

“Hubert.” Into the glove. Ah, yes. He lifted his hand free.

“Hubert.” Apparently that wasn’t it. He was about to ask. 

And then she was reaching out and palming him through his academy trousers, finding him, of course, of course, achingly hard. His own miserable condition had been the furthest thing from his mind, intentionally and requiring great focus, all his attention on Edelgard lest he start to consider this for or about _him_ in some way, just because he happened to be almost unbearably aroused by it. He hissed in surprise at her small hand groping him firmly, confidently, through his clothes. 

“Hubert.” A third time. He marshaled himself, still buried to the knuckle in her, her hand stroking him firmly through the fabric. 

“Yes... Lady Edelgard,” he finally managed. 

“Fuck me.” Too much, impossible. And yet, a command. And as Hubert in reality, alone in his room and working himself furiously, desperately, beyond reproach or tempering even by his own better judgment now, considered, why not?

They had always been united— two people sharing the same dream, working in service of the same vision, a bloody path, the future (Edelgard crowned with golden horns, magnificent, victorious) why couldn’t they share another dream, another vision, a new goal (Edelgard in rapture, her voice as she cried out, pale white hands clutching pale white sheets)? Hubert had spilled blood, sweat, tears for Edelgard. Why not his seed, then, and give her everything he had?

He came, then, forcefully, into his hand cupped over himself, the other still squeezing at his own throat hard enough to bruise. His harsh breathing was the only sound in the room, suddenly incredibly loud to his own ears in the aftermath. He steadied it as quickly as he could, staring in panic and disgust at the wall, fortunately stone and fairly thick, that separated his room from his liege’s. He had barely a moment of the boneless bliss that usually marked the moments after orgasm before he was swept with an irrational fear that Edelgard would’ve heard and would know, somehow, exactly the chain of events, would somehow know what he had been thinking. He forced that absurd notion out of his head, but couldn’t shake the lingering shame and disgust that followed, this time and every time, in its wake. 

He peeled off his gloves carefully so as to contain the mess and not get any on the floor or the rest of his clothes. He held the soiled gloves in his hand, about to rise to toss them into the laundry, with a mental note to take it to be laundered himself, before the housekeepers picked it up. The thought of another person, even unknowingly, handling the evidence of his weakness, his moral failings, filled him with an inward facing anger that he didn’t know how to channel.

He closed his eyes momentarily, inhaled, and flattened the palm of the hand with the gloves in it. They went up in flames, a neat little orange ball. Ah, he let it go a bit too long, singed his palm— no matter, he’d be putting on a second pair momentarily. He’d always been better, more in tune with blood magic than reason anyway. There were rules against trying this sort of thing in the dorm rooms, mainly to protect them all from Linhardt’s misguided magical experiments, but no one would ever know he had done this. His control was _impeccable_.

Hubert looked at the dusting of ash on the floor between his feet now. Maybe not as impeccable as he always thought. 

The monastery bells chimed, then, 8 times, startling him out of his melancholy fugue. Too late, then, to “rouse” Edelgard for morning training, and instead he’d see her momentarily at the dining hall. He wondered if she’d bring it up, the day of the week, the missed practice, and if she did, what he would do. Would he pretend to have also forgotten? He was an incredibly adept liar under normal circumstances and dishonesty came as naturally to him as breathing, but it was so rare that he tried to lie to Edelgard that he wasn’t sure if he could. She simply didn’t ask him anything he wouldn’t want to tell her, and he didn’t offer anything she hadn’t asked. 

He slipped on some fresh gloves from the top drawer, straightened himself up before the mirror. He met the eyes of his reflection and forced himself to hold it as long as he could stand. Pathetic man, he thought. You were supposed to be equal to any task, a perfectly forged tool for the next Hresvelg emperor, and yet you allow yourself this wholly inappropriate, delusional— longing? — which can only serve to render you unfit to serve. Unfit to serve and unwilling to leave the task, so important, nearly sacred, to anyone else. Edelgard would kill you if she found out. But, no, he knew, it would be worse than that. She wouldn’t kill him, he didn’t even think she’d be angry. She’d look at him and her eyes would go soft with that hateful undeserved warmth that always read as pity to him and she’d say “oh, Hubert,” and he had no idea what she’d say after that but it didn’t matter.His stomach churned with anger and regret and disgust for himself. His face was no longer flushed. His clothes were put back together. He left his room, closing the door behind him with practiced smooth gentleness. 

Across the long table from him, Edelgard narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. She didn’t bring it up. She stirred cream into her oatmeal, sipped delicately at her tea. She brushed off the young von Aegir like the buzzing gnat he was, greeted their disheveled professor with what appeared to be a genuine smile. Finally she leaned back and surveyed him. 

“Just coffee this morning, Hubert?” It was in her eyes, a softening of something hard and cold, that was there if you knew how to look. He knew how to look. 

“Indeed, my lady.” His stomach churned. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked this, i'm sorry, and feel free to let me know. stay tuned, because i've already started jotting down notes for a companion piece against all sense and good taste which i think is shaping up to somehow be even more fraught


End file.
